Is the Hollywood sign on fire?

As deadly wildfires continue to devastate Los Angeles County, the outbreak of a new inferno in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday afternoon led to the spread of fake pictures and video across social media claiming that the iconic Hollywood sign is ablaze.

Those images are fake and, at the time of writing, the legendary landmark is safe from the flames as the fire woud have to cross over a freeway in order to impact the sign. The fire has however impacted the lights that illuminate the sign, affecting its visibility.

At least five people have been killed by the out-of-control fires so far, with more than 1,000 structures destroyed and at least 150,000 residents forced to flee their homes.

Emergency responders are battling to rein in the destruction, although their efforts are not being helped by strong winds and dry conditions on the ground.

The popular X account Raw Alerts was one of the first to address the spread of the false rumors concerning the sign, reporting that the images being shared were “AI-generated”.

The account also posted screenshots from a website dedicated to the sign that features a live webcam trained on it at all times.

But that has not stopped users spreading false images like those featured in the posts below, unhelpfully adding to the atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the disaster.

One account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory even appeared to cheer the disaster, wrongly assuming the rumor to be true.

While the sign is indeed located in the Hollywood Hills area of the Santa Monica Mountains atop Mount Lee, the Sunset Fire is currently blazing in the Studio City area of Los Angeles and would need to roam eastwards and cross the tarmacked Highway 101 before it could climb the hills and engulf the landmark.

The sign was first erected in 1923 in the great days of the silent cinema, originally constructed from wood and steel and reading “Hollywoodland” to promote a forthcoming luxury housing development, the brainchild of former Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler.

It gained notoriety in 1932 when Welsh starlet Peg Entwistle took her own life by climbing a workman’s ladder to the top of the “H” and leaping to her death, leaving a suicide note to be retrieved from her purse.

The sign was donated to the City of Los Angeles in 1944 but subsequently fell into disrepair and faced the prospect of being torn down until Playboy founder Hugh Hefner raised the money for its restoration in 1978.

Its current incarnation is made from corrugated steel and mounted on a steel frame, meaning it is far more robust and less flammable than when it was first erected.